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96 CPUs in one (large) desktop workstation

What do you do when one, two, or even four CPUs isn't enough? Orion …

What do you do when one, two, or even four CPUs isn't enough? Orion Multisystems hopes you'll consider their newly announced cluster workstations. In an attempt to bring high-performance computing (HPC) to the desktop, the company has launched a product line aimed at scientists and content creators who need workstation-sized packages that can outperform some of the most powerful offerings from the likes of Sun, SGI, and others. Using Transmeta's Efficeon processor (coverage here), Orion is offering a Fedora Core 2-powered 12-processor workstation for $10,000, or a Super-Size-Me 96-processor system for less than $100,000. The specs will make any geek jealous.

Orion's DS-96 deskside Cluster Workstation has 96 nodes with 300 gigaflops (Gflops) peak performance (150 Gflops sustained), up to 192 gigabytes of memory and up to 9.6 terabytes of storage. It consumes less than 1500 watts and fits unobtrusively under a desk. Orion's DT-12 desktop Cluster Workstation has 12 nodes with 36 Gflops peak performance (18 Gflops sustained), up to 24 gigabytes of DDR SDRAM memory and up to 1 terabyte of internal disk storage. (1) The DT-12 consumes less than 220 watts and is scalable to 48 nodes by stacking up to four systems.

The company is hoping that these powerful workstations will convince potential customers of the benefits of workstation computing. In the last 10 years workstations have been attacked on both sides; desktop systems have become increasingly capable of performing complex tasks far beyond the needs of consumers, while server technology has made processing power available at a price that few dreamed of a decade ago. Clustered servers, while cheaper than in the past, tend to consume a great deal of power, and they have this nasty habit of taking up a good deal of space. They're also in high-demand in scientific facilities and content creation shops, where people have to to vie for time to even use the machines. In that sense, Orion hopes to justify their workstations as a much needed middle-point.

The middle point, of course, is more than just raw CPU power. A massively parallels system such as this is aimed squarely at computations which are inefficient to perform in a serial manner. If you can imagine rendering a complex 3D animated scene, you can see how having 96 processors working on a frame at the same time can be ideal when compared to only two or four processors, even if they are considerable faster than those in the nodes.

Of course, Orion is a curious company. The Santa Clara CA-based company was founded by none other than Colin Hunter, a co-founder not only of Transmeta, but also OQO. It seems Hunter's vision is Efficeon everywhere: HPC servers, tiny handheld devices, maybe even a notebook or two.

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher